


L'Appel du Vide

by dotpng



Category: Halt and Catch Fire
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 08:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8242786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotpng/pseuds/dotpng
Summary: He should’ve known, is the first thing he thinks.





	

He should’ve known, is the first thing he thinks, when the police are gone and he’s had time to imagine it a million different ways, the jump, the fall, the landing. He notices the curtains are drawn, now, as if to block out the view, the thought of it, he must’ve done it awhile ago but it’s been such a blur he can’t remember.

He should’ve known, because he was the same, for a long time, standing at the balcony picturing the fall, always the fall, different this time but always calling back to that first time, tumbling down, small and vulnerable and free like never before or since. He used to stand there gripping the railing, taking in the sprawling view all the way down, until he was dizzy with it. L’appel du vide, the french call it.

There was something about Ryan, though, that made it better, stabilized him. He still stood at the balcony, sometimes, but it wasn’t the same; just a breath of fresh air instead of morbid daydreams. He didn’t have the drive to obsess anymore, or the time, anyway; Ryan was always sitting next to him or making coffee or asleep, exhausted, in a mess of papers near his computer, and it was normal, it was good, for the first time in a long time and he should’ve known it wouldn’t last.

Ryan was so young, too young for this, and brilliant. He deserved better. He deserved a future, his future, the world at his fingertips like it could’ve been. But Joe- God, Joe had told him you have two options, forgetting the third, and Ryan had taken it, had made up the couch with him and then folded everything back up, stacked the sheets in neat squares, as if it mattered, while Joe slept unawares just feet away.

He’d been trying a new thing lately, honesty, openness. But there must be something in the coding of Joe MacMillan that destroys everything it touches, no matter what he tries and maybe, just maybe, it’s time to stop trying.

**Author's Note:**

> Send me requests/prompts at honestfutures.tumblr.com


End file.
